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914World.com _ 914World Garage _ Are my distributor springs mis-matched?

Posted by: Rav914 Jan 3 2009, 09:49 PM

I've been having a terrible time setting my timing. I put the light on it and saw it was all over the place and it goes full advance with the slightest throttle increase. So I decided to take it apart and see if the internals are gummed up. The can was good and holds a vacuum. Everything looked good; then I noticed the spring are different. Is that right? Seems to me it shouldn't be.

Dizzy is a '70 D-Jet. Bosch # 0 231 174 001, VW 022 905 205 F

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Posted by: Cap'n Krusty Jan 3 2009, 10:12 PM

What you show is correct. Be sure they're installed in the correct locations. The Cap'n

Posted by: jk76.914 Jan 3 2009, 10:12 PM

I noticed the same in a 1.7 distributor I took apart. Because of the elongated loop, the weights are essentially pushing against only one spring initially. This allows for a faster advance off idle. Once the second spring "bottoms out" in its loop, the rate of advance with increasing RPM decreases, because the centrifugal force now has to overcome two springs.

I put one such spring in my 2.0 to see if that earlier advance would help my throttle response off idle. If it did, it wasn't very dramatic.

Jim

Posted by: Rav914 Jan 3 2009, 10:59 PM

Thanks Cap'n and Jim. Great explanation of how they work. Makes sense. Also I think they were installed wrong (if it was reworked sometime in the past). If I put them on the way I took it off, the plate could spin to full advance and just barely come in contact with the elongated spring. When I swapped positions, the plate would begin to stretch the elongated spring halfway through its arc of travel.

Now I've cleaned off the plates, contact points, case, etc.

We'll see.......